


Luminism

by CherryIce



Series: Wayfinding [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Art, Benny Lafitte Cooks, Benny Lafitte Deserves Nice Things, Cuddling, Dean Winchester Deserves Nice Things, Domestic Fluff, Everybody Lives, Everyone deserves nice things, Fluff, Found Family, M/M, Roller Derby, let people have friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:27:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24380539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherryIce/pseuds/CherryIce
Summary: In which Dean and Benny (and Charlie and Sam, and everyone else) have a series of good days.
Relationships: Benny Lafitte/Dean Winchester, Charlie Bradbury & Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester/Better Mental Health
Series: Wayfinding [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1760458
Comments: 28
Kudos: 93





	Luminism

**Author's Note:**

> Just over two years ago, this pairing inspired me to start writing fic again, and Wayfinding happened. This sequel was started way back then, but was derailed by life and that time I accidentally wrote a novel of slow burn. Recent events have given me a strong desire to have good things happen to people. This started out as fluff, but now it's a little more like Skittles - still mostly sugar, but a little chewier and a bit of a jumble of flavors.
> 
> If you haven't read Wayfinding - or if it's been two years and you're not sure if you've read it - this should still make sense. Most of what you need to know is that everyone is alive, Dean and Benny live in Louisiana, Charlie lives in New Orleans, and everyone is trying to make better choices.
> 
> Many thanks to killa for sharing her love of New Orleans and to sweetestdrain who is, as always, a stellar beta.

“Yes!” Charlie yells, pumping her fist so hard it throws her to her feet.

Dean’s right behind her, hollering as their jammer whips past the last of the opposing pack and clears the other jammer.

Benny grins and shakes his head at them a little as they settle back down onto the wooden bleachers. His smile is fond and his head carries the same wry tilt to it that it always does when Dean and Charlie drag him out to see the Big Easy Rollergirls play.

“Ignore him,” Charlie says. She drags Dean closer as she pulls out her hip flask and Dean surreptitiously pulls back the plastic lids of their cups for her. She splashes a generous amount into each and Dean gives them a swirl to mix the contents before handing one back over. The entire procedure is quick and practiced, and Benny laughs into his coffee like it isn’t cut with something else entirely. Charlie pulls a face at him. “Freaking hipster thinks that just because he was here for the original rise of roller derby --”

“Think I was somewhere off Patagonia, actually,” Benny smirks.

Dean bumps a knee against his in support, because it’s not a time of his life Benny talks about much, not in concrete detail. Dean gets it. Benny silently leans into him.

“Oh come _on_ ,” Charlie yells toward the track, and Dean’s attention snaps back to the bout.

“I respect derby,” Benny says, later. The teams are resetting between jams, and the clamor of the crowd has settled to a lower bawl. His thigh is still firm against Dean’s. “And I can see the appeal, but I just don’t feel it.”

“Dude,” Dean says. He was raised on hunting and Top Notch Wrestling and there’s a rawness and realness here, and the energy in the room is -- “It’s awesome,” he says, instead, gesturing broadly as the ref whistles and the packs take off, “I mean, have you SEEN --” waving his hand at the cheering crowd and the uniforms and the players jockeying aggressively for position as they read the pack and try to anticipate every movement.

A woman in front of them turns around. She has purple hair and a nose ring. “You realize that every single one of these women could kick your ass,” she says.

Charlie snorts. Benny laughs, full-throated. “Oh, he knows.”

Dean flashes him his best shit-eating grin, finger guns, and a lecherous wink. Because, yeah, that doesn’t hurt. Benny bats Dean’s finger guns down and pulls him in by the collar to drop a kiss to the peak of his eyebrow.

There’s an almost imperceptible unwinding along the spine of the purple-haired woman in front of them. Dean thinks a little about what Charlie’s said about a specific type of ‘aggressively heterosexual energy’ he puts out sometimes, and he butts his hip a little closer against Benny’s. Dean’s always been comfortable with eyes on him. With flirting, seducing, in public. With putting on a show. Displays of actual affection, however, leave him feeling like a cat someone’s dropped in the bath - sputtering, flailing, and entirely surrounded by something he wasn’t expecting. It’s not like he doesn’t know exactly where that comes from, what it means.

Where Dean is physical, Benny is tactile and Charlie is casually affectionate, and Dean still has to work at it sometimes, leaning into them and letting them lean into him. His life has largely consisted of one-night stands and carefully metered manly back-slaps and shoulder clasps, and it’s weird to him sometimes, that he can just have hugs or casual physical contact. Weird that they’re available. Weird that sometimes he wants them.

“You ever think of joining?” Benny asks Charlie, leaning around Dean. Gesturing at the track.

“I don’t exactly have a reliable schedule,” Charlie says.

Dean snorts. On the track, one of their blockers throws a J-block at exactly the right time, tangling the other team’s jammer in the cascading crash.

“Yes!” Charlie yells, on her feet with her arms up as their jammer clears the pack. She coughs. Sits back down and calmly smooths her hair back behind her ears. “And, okay, I can get a little hypercompetitive sometimes,” she admits, wrinkling her nose.

Weird that Dean does sometimes want that kind of casual touch, Dean thinks, but he winds Charlie in to kiss the top of her head and cups his other hand protectively around the nape of Benny’s neck. Derby’s as good a place as any to let his freak flag fly.

(It’s a community, too, which is also still weird for Dean. A couple of weeks ago Dean and Charlie were at a record store. She was talking about third-wave feminism and LARP and punk rock while Dean was browsing vinyl when a vaguely familiar couple started talking excitedly about chainmail with Charlie. Dean was anxious and twitchy and looking for signs of demonic or angelic possession until they said something about a penalty kill at a bout a few weeks ago, and he realized they recognized him and Charlie from derby. Dean’s never thought of himself as particularly memorable, but he’s also never stayed in one place for this long before. Dean is big and loud and Charlie flitters and burns bright, and they both have non-specific accents that mark them as from nowhere in particular. The couple - Tamara and Jay - were super into the whole rockabilly/greaser look, all victory rolls and pompadours, polka dots and leather, dramatic lips and tight, cuffed jeans. Dean scoffed at them a bit for how hard they go in on aesthetic before Jay pointed out that Dean’s whole layered plaid, jeans worn the right side of ragged, and shit-kicking boots was an aesthetic too, and Dean thought of the rings and bracelets he’d put away and he just shrugged and laughed. _I bet you end up artistically dirty a least twice a week,_ Tamara said, which sent Charlie into a giggle fit that took her way too long to recover from. Dean was holding a Hendrix LP and Jay had one by the Ramones and it escalated into an argument about the roots of the punk movement and what counted as mullet rock and ended with Dean and Jay going home with the albums the other had bought, and now - and now Dean has records from The Clash and the Sex Pistols and Little Richard and - and now - Dean thinks that maybe he has friends.)

After derby, they track down the Diva Dawg truck. It’s night, but it’s summer in New Orleans which means the temperature doesn’t drop, humidity holding close to 100%. Fuck New York being the city that never sleeps. The close, tight heat of New Orleans, its yellow halogens and close-hanging night sky and the scent of angel’s trumpet and sweet olive make the constant bustle of the Big Apple and its sharp neons feel impersonal in comparison. Dean climbs out of the Impala, taking a second to lean against the car door. He tugs awkwardly at the neck of his plaid shirt where it sits over his henley, over his t-shirt, all heavy in the heat and humidity that somehow still hasn’t broken, before he swears and pulls everything except his t-shirt over this head and tosses them in Baby’s back seat. 

“Fuck yeah, praline milkshakes!” Charlie is yelling, already halfway to the bright yellow truck.

Benny doesn’t say anything at Dean’s finally stripping down in the heat but presses a quick hand to the damp small of Dean’s back. It’s easy as breathing, to catch Benny’s hand as it passes. Of course, in the heavy humidity, breathing’s been easier, but Dean keeps their hands linked until they get their food.

They wander, close enough to the river that they cut towards it to eat. It’s a part of the city that still bears scars from Katrina, but in a way that most of it does once you get away from the money and if you know how to look. It’s not as bad as the Ninth Ward where the Big Easy Roller Girls play. First time they drove through, Dean whistled, _Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time_ falling from his lips without thought, thinking of Pilgrim and his fellow prisoners of war emerging from their meat locker to find Dresden erased by bombs and firestorms. It’s a neighborhood where the one-two punch of Katrina and Rita and the fact it’s full of people it’s easy for politicians not to give a fuck about has led to a landscape flat with sway-backed, collapsing homes and buildings edging buckled asphalt roads, interspersed with areas where everything was washed away when the levees broke. Just off the highway exit for the stadium there’s an abandoned hotel that still stands, weather-worn curtains billowing out through broken windows. It’s definitely haunted, but Dean doesn’t know if it’s haunted by _ghosts_.

The Diva Dawg truck is in New Orleans proper, close to the river, so they cut down towards it, small family homes with peeling paint giving way to a patchwork of corrugated metal buildings gone rusty and lots fenced in with chain link heavy with vegetation until they dead-end against a concrete barrier that lines the river. They find an access ladder so they can scale it, Benny’s supernatural reflexes the only reason their food makes it up in one piece. The concrete is a sweet, cool relief against Dean’s skin. He’s eating a red bean chili dog topped with fried chicken and he can already feel Benny plotting to fill him up with veggies for the next week. (Worth it.) Benny’s eating an alligator dog topped with crawfish and Charlie is hoovering up fries smothered with crawfish etouffee, drinking her milkshake, and doggedly refusing to share her bread pudding. They stare out at the dark river moving deceptively placidly before them, ripples made small by distance reflecting the city glow. Charlie hops up onto the ledge to dangle her feet over the edge, and Dean leans his back against the short wall and lets his ankle knock against Benny’s as they talk about seelie and selkies and LARP and Jody’s growing home for wayward hunters. Eventually, Benny starts to talk about rounding Cape Horn, about Patagonia, about the fjords and channels of Chile, about the distant bite of Antarctica on the air, about how the shapes and angles of the mountains change as you sail northward.

They sit and eat and listen and watch the river move distant below them.

*

Susan sold them the house a little while back. Dean sometimes stops stock still at a burst of memory that it’s their house. That he and Benny own it. That it’s _theirs_.

Benny’s side of the closet has been slowly filling up. Sometimes Dean finds himself standing there, hand resting on the soft fabric of a new shirt or fingers curling into sturdy worsted wool. 

Dean, who spent ages 4-30 and 31-34 living out of motel rooms and abandoned buildings and vacant lots and the truck stops and the back seat of his car, has never really developed anything you’d actually call a wardrobe. 

(And, yeah, okay, he’ll cop to the fact that maybe he likes to play dress up. He still has all his time travel clothes, the cowboy outfit and the Eliot Ness suit. He doesn’t have much call to wear either, but every once and a while they go somewhere nice and Dean pulls out the Eliot Ness suit, or parts of it, depending. Sometimes he’ll skip the greatcoat, the suit jacket, wear the pants that still hug his ass and the waistcoat and a crisp white shirt with the top two buttons undone and sleeves rolled up his forearms. It’s a fucking rush the way Benny looks at him, the way sometimes even the pretense of his breath stops and he looks like he’s going to eat Dean alive. _Considering that’s an actual possibility, it should probably be less of a turn-on than it is_ , he confides in Charlie one day. _You’re such a dweeb_ , Charlie tells him because she definitely knows he only had to plop a cowboy hat on Benny once before Benny caught on.)

Point being, Dean’s got a few things that acquired quickly, once he’d decided to stay. Shit like he’d had when he lived with Lisa. Extra shirts, socks, because he hates doing laundry, but Benny, with his enhanced sense of smell, starts making faces at Dean if he wears the same shirt too many days or walks around covered in creature goop for any length of time. Dean’s side of the closet has been pretty stable, since. Benny doesn’t say anything about it, but his own side has been slowly filling up. A new pack of undershirts here, crisply pressed trousers there, the heavy wool of a pea coat free of pilling and wear. A buttery-soft button-up that Dean finds himself absently running his fingers across when Benny wears it.

Benny does it all without comment, sometimes looks like he thinks Dean is going to say something about the - expense or girlishness of it, or something - and it’s true that most of Dean’s stuff comes from second-hand stores, but --

The truth is that something unwinds inside of Dean when Benny starts buying nicer clothes. Not that Dean needs a trophy boyfriend or anything or because Dean himself is a snappy dresser, but because it means something that Benny’s investing in nicer, less threadbare clothing. Clothing that will last. Like Benny thinks he’s going to be around for long enough to wear something out, long enough for his comfort to be worth it. Like Benny’s important enough to be worth it.

Dean doesn’t know how to say any of that, though, to explain the pressure he hadn’t even realized was coiled tight around his lungs until the moment he looked at a new pair of shoes in the closet and it released and left him feeling like he could breathe again. Instead, he says “looking good,” and slaps Benny’s ass when he wears new pants; instead, he spends way too much on socks and slips them in with Benny’s stuff.

*

“Can demons possess vampires?” Kevin asks absently, one day. Dean’s on one of his semi-regular sojourns to the bunker as he and Sam and Kevin try to find some information on Musca mating habits. Kevin’s pouring through a text, twiddling a pen in his left hand. Dean and Sam’s heads snap up from their own research in concert, meeting across the table.

“No,” Sam says. Pauses. “They - no, I’m pretty sure they can’t.”

“Right,” Dean nods. “We’ve never seen -”

“Yeah.” Sam goes back to his book. Stops. Looks up to find Dean still looking at him. 

“Thing is,” Dean says. “We’ve never been in a situation where it would be an advantage.”

“There’s never been a situation where it would be an advantage,” Sam says. “Just - add vampire weaknesses to demon powers, right?”

Kevin looks up. “Wait. Would it make demons sensitive to sunlight and dead man’s blood, or would it get rid of their sensitivity to salt and iron?”

“I don’t know,” Sam says, looking at Dean. 

“Nah,” Dean says. “Vampires are dead. Demons need a living host. Demon’d probably explode if they tried.” He keeps his voice even and confident and starts rereading a page he has no memory of.

“Definitely,” Sam says, voice gentle.

When Dean gets home it’s two days later, and there are significantly more people in his house than he expected. He has a purpling bruise blooming across his ribs and grit in his eyes, and Krissy and Josephine are sitting on the kitchen counter and eating cold pizza directly out of an unfamiliar-looking box. Benny passes a bottle of beer back over his shoulder without looking, condensation only starting to bead on it, like Benny pulled it out of the fridge when he heard Dean’s car growling up the drive.

“Thanks,” Dean says, squeezing his shoulder in thanks before he pops the bottle cap with his ring and darts in to steal a piece of pizza. “Thanks,” he says, again, muffled, around a mouthful of pepperoni and cheese as the girls squawk at him in indignation. “This is terrible pizza,” he says, only it comes out more like “whash-ahs-tarrifle-pisha” because he’s still eating.

“Right?” Charlie says, and dives into another piece. (Charlie, who’s been through the foster system and juvie, sometimes eats like Dean does, when she’s exhausted and hungry and slipping into old habits.)

“Can demons possess vampires?” Dean asks, later, when the four of them have polished off the entire terrible pizza while Benny laughed at them from overtop his bloody whomever. Charlie, Krissy, and Josephine are only slightly the worse for wear after dealing with a pack of ghouls, but their eyes are drooping.

“Huh,” Benny says, like he’s never thought about it. “You know, I have no idea.”

Charlie looks like she’s doing math in her head. “What would happen if a vampire tried to turn a human who was currently possessed by a demon?”

“Wait,” Josephine says, popping upright from her satisfied slump against Krissy’s side. “Would the weaknesses add or cancel out?” she asks, which kicks off a fairly spirited conversation between her and Charlie about synergistic versus antagonistic weaknesses and other potential monster hybrids.

Dean groans. “Long story short, then - we don’t know.” He drops his head against Benny’s shoulder. “Better safe than possessed by a demon,” he says. 

Benny brings up one broad hand to scratch soothingly through the short hairs at the nape of Dean’s neck. “I’ve always kind of wanted a tattoo,” he says.

“Wait, tattoo?” Krissy asks, and Dean’s head snaps up.

“Okay,” Dean says, loudly enough to stop Charlie and Josephine’s discussion in its tracks. “Everyone who has a tattoo, put their hand up.”

Charlie’s hand is the only one that shoots into the air.

Dean exhales. Pinches the bridge of his nose. “Hands up, everyone who has a tattoo that isn’t of a hot chick in a gold bikini.”

Charlie’s arm creeps down.

Dean is already patting himself down for car keys. “Okay,” he says. “Everyone get in the car. We’re all getting anti-possession tattoos.”

“Ooooh, family road trip,” Krissy snarks, but she looks a little unsettled.

(Dean loves Charlie, okay, and he’s constantly grateful for her presence in his life in a way he’s pretty sure he doesn’t need to verbalize. But he’s not sure he’s ever been as viscerally grateful for her as he is that night, her presence greatly reducing the creep factor inherent in two thirty-something men taking a couple of barely-legal, lightly-bruised girls to get permanently branded with pentagrams in the middle of the night.)

*

Dean’s phone buzzes on the nightstand, vibrating staccato against the dark-stained wood, nudging up against the lamp casting a warm light across Dean’s hands and the pages of his book. Dean, sitting propped up against the headboard, reaches over to grab his phone. The pages of _Dhalgren_ flutter in the air stirred by the fan doing its level best by the window.

It’s a text from Donna, a single photo.

Benny steps in from the bathroom, face cleanly scrubbed and hair neat. He starts unbuttoning his shirt. “You’re mighty popular tonight,” he says.

Dean rolls his eyes, because of course Benny can hear Dean’s phone vibrating. “Just doing some housekeeping,” he says. He wonders if Benny caught a slight sideways glimpse of the photo on his phone, nothing more than an impression of skin and curves. He flips his phone around so that Benny can see the screen. “Donna’s anti-possession tattoo,” he says. Coming from anyone else, it would be an unnecessarily saucy shot. It’s Donna, though, so it’s the perfect degree of saucy. Benny raises an eyebrow in appreciation and Dean flips his phone back around. “Might have sent out a group text or whatever. Telling everyone to send me a photo of their damn tattoos.”

 _Perv_ , comes a text from Claire.

Dean rolls his eyes. _If I don’t see a picture in the next 72 hours I’m driving up to South Dakota and tattooing you myself,_ he sends.

 _Can you even draw?_ Claire asks.

 _Get a damn tattoo or you’re going to find out,_ Dean sends. Tosses his phone back on the nightstand as Benny settles in beside him. Dean showered before bed but there’s already sweat starting to bead along the nape of his neck despite the gust of air from the fan.

“Get down here,” Dean grumbles at Benny, pushing him around until he’s in the right position for Dean to use as a pillow to siphon some of the heat from his skin as he reads. Benny smells like soap and toothpaste and something both dangerous and comforting, and he lets a thumb rub gently along the notch of Dean's deltoid and bicep. 

Eventually, Dean’s eyes start to droop and the book drifts towards his chest. Benny carefully picks the book up off Dean’s chest and leans over him to set it on the nightstand. Turns off the light. Dean, half asleep in the soft golden light and then in the dark, floats a little in the comfort of having Benny’s breadth around him. Benny starts to pull back but Dean catches his hand and folds him in, pulling so that Benny’s surrounding him. It’s hot enough that the thought of being within five feet of another living being makes Dean sympathy sweat, but there are some upsides to having a vampire boyfriend.

Benny nuzzles in, tucks his head so his nose nestles behind the shell of Dean’s ear. “Fais de beaux rêves,” he says, voice low and soft as his lips brush Dean’s neck. Dean drifts off in the whir of the fan and call of cicadas and distant rustle of leaves, still feeling the words rumbling against his spine.

*

New Orleans is lousy with witchcraft. If you know how to listen, the rhythm of the city pulses with songs of voodoo worship. Hoodoo herbs carry on the breeze, rue and wormwood catching your breath at unexpected intervals. Even if Dean had a mind to try to clear out all the practitioners, it wouldn’t be feasible, let alone safe.

“Be a bit hypocritical anyway,” Benny says.

Dean grimaces and scratches his eyebrow in acknowledgement, because there are protective sigils carved in their floorboards and wild herbs and flowers Benny scattered through the long grass around their place in carefully random patterns. Dean runs his fingers absently along his forearm, where he carried Benny’s soul curled between skin and bone, and thinks about how there’s no way the Bunker’s still running on technology alone.

Dean, well known amongst those he stalks, settles uncomfortably around the edges, leaves them alone in an unspoken non-aggression treaty. Benny fits with them more easily, a community hovering in the mutable spaces between ‘people’ and ‘monster.’ Dean’s grateful for the uneasy truce when Benny’s tattoo won’t stick. The ink leaches slowly but surely out of Benny’s skin, smudges on his towel and leaves ashy shadows along the inside of his undershirts and a faint taste of pennies on Dean’s tongue.

“I have an idea,” Benny says. “But you’re not going to like it.”

He’s right, of course. Dean doesn’t like it. What he likes even less, though, is the thought of some black- or red- or yellow-eyed bastard wearing Benny. 

Dean thinks, sometimes, about how he’d only known John was possessed because he hadn’t yelled at him for saving Sam. How would he know if someone was riding Benny? He thinks about all the demons who might want to take him down for glory or revenge or out of boredom. He thinks about Bobby and Sam, eyes black and arms drawn back, fists and knives and guns and water closing over his head. He thinks - he thinks Benny would take a while to forgive himself.

The shop is small and dark. Stepping in from the bustling street outside brings a sudden drop in noise and temperature, its sweet-bitter-must washing away the smell of sunbaked concrete and the steady odor of too many bodies in the heat. Stained glass windows cut the light into fractal patterns of color that fall across books and cabinets and masks and statues and sprays of herbs. The front of the store is touristy as fuck, but Dean’s trained eye picks up a quincunx on the floor as as they wind their way back past spinning racks of postcards and small glass cases of tchotchkes. Past it the icons of loa are less Anglicized, gris-gris bags done in basic linen instead of bright colors, unadorned rather than decorated with stylized drawings. Dean picks out narrow bundles of Devil’s Shoestring and hopes people are using it for conjuring rather than warding off hellhounds. The sharp green-citrus scent of Van Van oil cuts through the air.

“Roseline,” Benny says, nodding familiarly at the woman sitting behind the counter. She has a full head of dreadlocks swept back neatly from her face, and she’s been watching Dean intently, suspiciously, since they walked in the door. She’s wearing heavy necklaces - layers of dark beads and an ornate crucifix - and a loose top shot through with shifting, ornate patterns of gold and scarlet and black. The strap of a practical tank top peeks out from the wide neckline and matches her dark jeans in a way that makes Dean pretty sure the flowy, stereotypical top comes off the second she’s not going to have to deal with tourists anymore. 

Dean nods calmly at her. He keeps his hands out of his pockets and slightly away from his sides where she can see them. Dean tries to look non-threatening while everything he’s had drilled into him since childhood tells him to have his hand on his gun. Just in case this starts to go sideways. Roseline gives him a careful onceover, face unimpressed, though she cracks a little and snorts almost imperceptibly in amusement at Benny’s hand hovering in midair near Dean’s back.

“She’s waiting for you,” Roseline says, finally. She deliberately turns her back on them, and sweeps off through a narrow doorway and up wooden stairs. 

“Easy, cheri,” Benny whispers against Dean’s ear as they follow. Dean huffs in response. The muscles in his forearms are vibrating from not clenching his fists or going for his gun.

Roseline’s right hand on the railing exposes the bare inside of her wrist, skin inked in the strong black lines of a familiar-looking symbol. It takes Dean a couple of seconds to place it as the sigil he’s seen scratched, small and unobtrusive, at the corners of vaults and tombs and mausoleums in some of the cemeteries. Especially ones from about 11 years ago.

Dean looks at it as they follow her up the wooden stairs. “Not as many ghosts as I’d expect in this city,” he says, slowly.

Benny looks askance at him.

Roseline picks her hand up off the railing, touches the tattoo softly with her other hand. “Still far more looking for peace than there ever should have been,” she says. 

This entire transaction would have been easier without Dean present, but no way was he letting Benny walk in alone and ask a favor of a Mambo. Benny let the argument go easy, so Dean knows he didn’t disagree. 

(Under normal circumstances, they wouldn’t have needed a high priestess to okay a tattoo, but even by the standards of Dean’s life, ‘a hunter’s vampire boyfriend getting a magical tattoo to ward off demon possession’ is -- not normal.)

If the shop was everything Dean was expecting, the room that opens up at the top of the stairs is the opposite. It’s large and bright and airy, everything neatly organized. There’s a label maker on the main desk and it’s clearly been used on the shelves and hooks that neatly line the walls. Some small boxes labeled mugwort, vervain, sulfur, snakeskin, graveyard dirt, hibiscus, skull cap; entire shelves marked purification, protection, prophecy, resins. There’s a workstation that’s obviously still in use, a pile of mojo bags growing in a box beside it, but the herbs and unmentionable fragments are in individual tupperware containers and the oils are lined up neatly.

“The hell,” Dean whispers under his breath. Benny and Roseline snort.

“I’m particular,” the woman behind the desk says. She has a neat halo of dark hair framing her face. 

“What’s the hibiscus for?” Dean asks.

“Tea,” she laughs. “Caffeine in the evening does a number on my sleep,” she says, standing to greet them. “Cecilia,” she says. There are plants littering the window sills around her, lush and green and moderately poisonous looking. She looks like someone you take your taxes to. She looks like someone you’d trust to sell your house. 

“I’m Dean,” Dean says, and Cecilia laughs out loud.

“I know that, boy,” she says. Walks towards them. “Even if I wasn’t smart enough to keep track of the Winchester in my city, only one person out there’s wearing Samedi’s fingerprints like you are.”

Dean twitches a bit, looks down at his arms like he thinks marks are going to materialize all over his body. She laughs. “The Baron refuses to dig your grave. I’d leave well enough alone.” She steps closer to Benny and looks at him carefully. “Huh,” she says. “I’d’ve expected him to have you as well, but you’re one of Agwé’s, aren’t you?”

Benny tilts his head in acknowledgment. “You’d know better than I, Mambo,” he says.

She laughs, smacks his arm lightly, and the entire room seems to shift, tension shaking apart. “I like you,” she says. Looks more closely at Dean. “You fixing to make any trouble?”

“Depends,” Dean says, honestly. Thinks about the sigil marked on Roseline’s wrist, carved into stone. “You hurting anyone?”

“Depends,” she says. “Doing my best not to hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it.”

“We’re copacetic, then,” Dean says. Her honesty is refreshing.

She stands close. “You?”

Dean feels Benny move in closer to him, protective. Dean lets his hand sneak out, pinky catching lightly at Benny’s sleeve. “Trying to hold the same line,” he says. “Only if I have to.”

Cecilia looks at them carefully and nods. “Okay,” she says. Claps her hands and turns to Benny. “Shirt off.”

*

Dean’s standing at the sink, watching the last of the suds sluice from white ceramic as he holds the plate under running water. The distant murmur of Benny’s voice comes into clearer focus as Dean turns off the tap and slides the plate into the drip rack with the rest of the breakfast dishes.

“‘Course,” Dean hears Benny say, then “give her a kiss from me.” The familiar squeak of that one damn board by the stairs tells Dean that Benny’s heading back into the kitchen.

Dean snags a towel threaded through the handle of the oven door. “What’s up?” he asks, turning to face Benny as Dean dries his hands.

Benny has his phone tucked back into his pocket before he steps into the kitchen, and he’s sheepishly rubbing a hand across the back of his head. “I know it’s supposed to be my day off,” he starts. 

“Everything okay?” Dean asks.

Benny waves a hand. “Julie twisted her ankle at t-ball last night. Looked fine, but it swole up something fierce overnight. Probably nothing, but Susan wanted to take her in to have it looked at.”

“And she needs you to fill in this afternoon,” Dean says.

“Yeah,” Benny says. Drops his hand from the back of his neck to his pocket and he rocks on his heels. “Sorry, cheri.”

Dean tosses the tea towel to the kitchen counter. “Don’t worry about it. Let me know how things go with the doc.”

“Will do.” Benny nods. “You should still go into the city for that exhibit, though.”

Dean snorts. Photography is more Benny’s thing, really - the steady accumulation of printed pictures on their fridge, Dean and Charlie mugging for the camera or places they’ve been or Dean caught quiet and soft around the eyes, but -- “It closes next week. I’m not going to stay here and sulk around the house like I’m waiting for my husband to return from the war.”

“There’s a Jasper Johns exhibit starting in a couple of months,” Benny says.

Dean’s seen the promo posters for that exhibit. A monochrome print of assorted paintbrushes tucked handle up in a Savarin coffee tin, the grain of the wood of the front of the table overlaid with the only splash of color in the piece, the print of a hand and forearm the color of arterial spray. He knows there are other prints of it in full color. Some where the only handprints are in neon paint against the backdrop of the wall behind the brushes. “Yeah,” Dean says. Thinks about variations on a theme, twists of reality. “Let’s hit that when it’s here.”

It’s not like it’s going to cost them anything extra, because they have a membership to NOMA. And since - and since when is Dean the kind of person who has a museum membership, what the fuck. They used to have a family membership because it covered both him and Benny and a guest. 

(Benny had heard the way Dean’s breath and heart hesitated when the teller used the word _family_ and had he had diplomatically started to ask her for two individual memberships. There wasn’t any disappointment evident on his face or in how he held himself, but Dean knew, knows, that Benny compromises what he wants too often on account of Dean’s issues, and what is a museum membership, really, and -- _fuck it_ , Dean whispered, probably not low enough under his breath for a family-friendly institution, and settled his hand on the small of Benny’s back. _Family membership makes more sense_ , he said. The way Benny smiled at him, startled and warm and openly in love, gave Dean a high that lasted through the museum, through supper, through the drive home with Benny’s arm slung across the front seat and fingertips resting soft at the nape of Dean’s neck.)

This year they got a _sustaining_ membership, because it gets them into a shit-ton of museums all across the country. It’s a nice break, sometimes, when they’ve been out on a hunt and looking at a lot of ugliness, to just - stop and look and something pure, or clean, or even just appreciate the mastery of craft. 

“I’m glad you agreed to go to that cowboy museum with me,” Dean says. Thinks of that first road trip he and Benny had taken after Dean had called him after the crypt, about the easy push and pull they’d fallen into as museum tickets accumulated in Baby’s glovebox. Variations on a theme, Dean thinks.

“Do you want me to put on the cowboy hat?” Benny asks, voice low. The entire energy of his presence has changed, and while Dean wouldn’t call the way Benny moves across the kitchen toward him a _prowl_ , it’s - 

“Hat’s all the way upstairs,” Dean says, mouth dry.

“We’ve got time,” Benny says, crowding up against Dean, pressing him back against the counter. 

“Not that much,” Dean says, curling one hand in the waistband of Benny’s slacks. Benny’s hands bracket Dean’s waist before one sneaks down to hook the free end of Dean’s belt out from his belt loops, other coming to his buckle. Dean’s elbow knocks against the handle of the frying pan and he winces and shakes his head. “Not here,” he says, snapping one of Benny’s suspenders so it thwaps against his chest. “I just did the damn dishes.”

Benny bites his earlobe. “So demanding,” he says. Lets Dean push him back toward the living room, the overstuffed couch.

“I’ll show you demanding,” Dean says. “Got a whole list for you.”

“Yeah?” Benny asks. Growls. Hits the arm of the couch with the back of his knees and manages to spin them so that Dean lands under him on the cushions. Dean shifts under his weight, but it’s more of a stretch and roll of his hips rather than any actual attempt to displace Benny. 

“Let’s start at number one,” Benny says. Kisses the corner of Dean’s mouth. Opens Dean’s belt buckle with a quick, practiced motion. “And work our way down.” Kisses the notch of his clavicle. His sternum. The strip of skin where Dean’s shirt has ridden up from his pants.

“Hey,” Dean says. Reaches down to cup Benny’s face, thumb tracing a line along Benny’s brow bone, his cheekbone. The air is hot and still. Mid-morning light filters yellow through the curtains. “Love you,” Dean says. It feels somehow both too shallow and too deep. _Love me back,_ Dean doesn’t say. _That’s it, that’s the list._

Benny turns his face into Dean’s hand, closing his eyes. He presses a soft kiss to the cupped palm of Dean’s hand, his lips soft and dry. “Je t’adore,” he says. Opens his eyes, and they’re warm, despite how cool the blue is. “I love you.” 

Between Benny’s steady, warm eyes and the heat of the room, Dean feels almost like he’s running a fever, and just when it’s almost too much, Benny breaks, grinning up at him a little goofily before he nuzzles back into the strip of skin between Dean’s t-shirt and pants and blows a raspberry above his belly button. Dean kicks a little, automatically, laughing, and Benny makes short work of his pants.

( _I’m glad you_ asked _me to go to that cowboy museum with you_ , Benny murmurs into Dean’s shoulder, later, as Dean’s heart rate finally starts to come down.)

*

The photography exhibit at NOMA is all mirrors and reflections. Dean didn’t really walk in with any other expectations of an exhibit called Self/Reflection, but it feels like a maze of distortion of the everyday. Frozen moments and entire universes expanded back to and beyond the camera, leaving him feeling unsteady and a little dizzy, like the reflected figures in the photos might actually be looking out at him. Like maybe he’s the one captured in time, or that the world behind him might be _off_ if he looks at it too closely.

Dean wanders a bit, finds himself sitting down on a padded bench in a hushed gallery with warm walls, staring at the painting in front of him. It reminds him a little of painting on the magnet he brought Benny back from a hunting trip he was on with Sam. There’s the obvious, in there are boats near shore, waves, but it’s more than that. It’s the way the entire thing seems suffused with light, the interplay of sun and water and waves.

The one in front of Dean now is a sunrise. Gold and peach, reflecting bright off clouds and the wings of birds and leaving a trail of light in the thin skim of water of waves rushing and retreating over sand. There are boats in the distance, sails set and steady, fading into early morning haze. Warm, half-shadowed cliffs soaring above the beach that have withstood the waves for thousands of years. Dean has the sudden, wild thought that if he sat here all day watching it, he might see changing reflections on the sweeping wings of birds, that when the museum brought down the overhead incandescents he’d see the light start to flow from the sunrise in front of him, flicker through the waves.

Dean closes his eyes for a second, like he might be able to feel that glow, and he hears a flutter of feathers, feels the ghost of a rustle of wings. There’s a moment of disorientation when he opens his eyes, like part of his brain expects to see the gulls have moved on the wind, but it’s Cas sitting beside him. 

“Hey,” Dean says, surprise in his voice. Tries not to think about the fact that he’s surprised Cas is there at all, instead of by his sudden appearance. Dean gets that Cas is busy with Heaven and Hell or whatever, that Dean-and-Benny changes things in a way that Dean doesn’t really want to or know how to talk about, but he misses his friend.

“Claire says you threatened to brand her against her will,” Cas says, finally, when the silence has dragged. 

Dean snorts. “Guess that’s one way of looking at it,” he says. 

Cas inclines his head toward Dean. “I told her it was irresponsible that she did not already have an anti-possession tattoo.”

Dean laughs. Keeps it low without realizing he’s doing it, conversation in hushed museum tones as people flow around them. “Bet she took that well.” At least Cas didn’t try telling her that he was disappointed in her.

“You would lose that bet,” Cas says. He’s wearing the same old suit with a slightly different tie and almost-identical trenchcoat, and Dean has no idea how he decides to make these changes. “But she did eventually agree to get the tattoo, as well as allow me to carve Enochian sigils into her ribs.”

“Good,” Dean says. Breathes deep, like on a deeper inhale he can feel his own pressing into his own intercostal muscles.

“I could do the same for your friends, if you would like,” Cas says.

Dean shrugs. “Have I ever turned down an offer of protection?” he asks. “You’ll have to ask them, though.” And: “Things heating up that badly in heaven?”

Cas shakes his head. “Not particularly,” he says. “In fact, quite the opposite. It is going suspiciously well. I just - find myself somewhat loath to trust it.”

“I get that,” Dean says. Leans forward so that his elbows rest on his knees. Thinks about how sometimes he worries he’s hallucinating all of this. He looks down at his hands as his fingers lace loosely together. “Sometimes I worry I’m going to wake up,” Dean says. “That this is - I don’t know, a djinn hallucination or something and when I open my eyes I’ll be back in the blood and the thick of it, that everyone I love will be dead.”

He’s not sure if finally saying it out loud gives it more or less power. If he’s tempting fate, or --

“Have you told Benny this?” Cas asks.

“Nah,” Dean says. Looking at his loosely entwined fingers. “Don’t want him to worry I’m half-way gone or some shit like that.”

“I think he would like to know,” Cas says. “I know that I am inexperienced with the boundaries of interpersonal relationships, but--”

Dean’s shoulders draw up closer to his ears. “I’m happy, Cas,” he says. “I’m - I’m happy, but sometimes, I don’t know how to - look, Benny deals with enough of my shit.”

Cas turns his head to look directly at Dean. “Benny is not stupid,” Cas says. “And I believe that you are well aware that he went into this relationship fully cognizant of ‘your shit,’ as you put it. As you did of his.”

Dean stares at the painting. Breathes in through his nose and tries to somehow absorb the peace of it. “Yeah,” he says, when the nervous twitches at the edges of his nervous system have settled. “Yeah,” he says again. “Thanks, Cas.”

Cas nods somberly. “You are most welcome.”

Dean and Cas sit there, quiet, while museum visitors flow around them, their murmured conversations rising and falling. 

Dean takes a picture of the painting in front of them and texts it to Benny. _thought of you_ is all he says, hoping he sees the solid, quiet, early warmth of it and understands.

 _Your friends_ , Cas had said when he’d offered to angel-proof everyone, and Dean thinks there’s a time that might have been _our friends_. He wonders if Cas is lonely, or if he’s happier and better understood in the company of celestial beings than he ever was on Earth.

“I was going to check out the sculpture garden,” Dean says, cracking his back a little as he gets up.

“All right,” Cas says, still sitting on the padded bench with his trench pooling around him.

“You coming?” Dean asks.

The transition from the cool, quiet air conditioning of the museum to the swampy humidity of the day outside hits Dean in the face harder than most right hooks he’s taken from monsters. Cas appears completely oblivious to the transition, but his coat looks like it wilts a little.

*

“Cas showed up at the museum,” Dean says, casually. He’s poking around in Charlie’s kitchen, trying to find the ingredients to make them something for supper that isn’t just rabbit food, but that also won’t drive the temperature in her Uptown apartment even higher.

“Yeah?” Charlie asks. They’re both pleasantly and lightly buzzed. She hops up on the kitchen counter as he closes the counter. Crosses her legs as he opens the fridge and sticks his whole head inside. He reaches out and knocks her feet off the food preparation surface. “Everything okay up there?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Dean says. Cataloging ham, cheddar, tomatoes, lettuce. “He offered to angel-proof everyone.”

“Ooooooh,” Charlie says. “What is that, more tattoos?”

Dean snorts. “Basically?” and “Okay, we’re having sandwiches but we’re going to need chips.”

“Duh,” Charlie says, hopping down from the counter. Snaps off a salute “Aye aye, sir.”

Dean rolls his eyes and opens the crisper. “I’ll get started on the sandwiches if you run to the corner store and get--”

Charlie’s already digging through the front closet for her bag. “The spicy ones, right?”

“Perfect,” Dean says, putting things out on the counter as the door swings closed behind her.

Dean’s phone buzzes. _Doc says Julie just needs to stay off that ankle for a couple of days,_ Benny texts. Dean winces. Going to be hard to convince her of that. _Good_ , he sends.

It’s ten minutes to the corner store and back, and Charlie’s been gone for about eight when Dean hears the hiss and tap as the heavy sky that’s been threatening all day starts to release. Dark clouds were hanging low overhead while he and Cas wandered the statue garden, cutting the direct beat of sunlight but doing nothing for the temperature. Dean found himself searching the hot breeze for the metallic scent of rain, but nothing cut through the heavy press of greenery, the standing water that ringed the NOMA and the nearby Bayou St. John.

Charlie bangs in through the door as Dean’s putting a finishing smear of mayo on the bread. She’s bedraggled, wet. She tosses the bag of chips on the counter, rainwater puddling in the crinkles of foil. She moves as if to shake her wet hair at Dean and he quickly puts himself between her and supper. “ _Soggy bread_ ,” he warns.

“Uggh, fine,” Charlie says, and gives him a damp hug instead, leaving wet hand and body prints on his shirt and reaching around to snag a piece of cheese. 

By the time Charlie reemerges from her bedroom wearing dry clothes and still-damp hair caught up in a ponytail, Dean has two plates sitting out, sandwiches cut to show a perfect cross-section of meat and cheese and veggies, chips stacked all around them. Charlie grabs one and the sliding door to the balcony and Dean follows behind her with the other plate in one hand, and the long necks of two bottles of beer caught between his fingers in the other. 

Charlie and Dean sit out on her balcony and eat as the rain runs down Spanish tiles. She loves storms. They watch the dark, oblong leaves of magnolias and bend and flex in the rain, dust washed off and leaves a deep and vivid green. The saw palmettos that edge the nearby buildings wave. Dean wonders what it’s like in City Park right now, under the live oaks, the Spanish moss and strangler ferns catching the deluge and filtering it to mist and softer drips. The rain makes it hotter, humidity skyrocketing without driving down the temperature. 

Dean licks chili-salt residue from the chips from his fingers and curls them around the perspiring neck of his bottle of beer. He has a sudden sense memory of Washington last spring. He and Benny had finished a salt-and-burn a little before dawn and had ended up wandering, aimless, as the sun came up and the day woke slowly around them. The air fell grey and hazy with humidity that couldn’t decide if it was mist or rain, only knowing it was a chill, damp presence that wanted to worm its way into your bones. That centered itself around you when it anchored its chill fingers in, spreading out around you and giving a reduced, muffled horizon for sight and noise. Benny took off his scarf and wound it carefully around Dean’s neck. It didn’t carry any inherent warmth, but it smelled like him and held Dean’s own body heat. Dean thinks about how the tips of their noses were cold when Benny stepped in close to tuck the scarf in, how the quick brush of his lips was cool and misty. Dean doesn’t remember what they talked about as they walked, what they discussed as they sat in a diner, later. Dean doesn’t remember what kind of pie he was eating. He remembers the crust was flaky and rich and can almost feel how it gave under his fork, can feel how their ankles tangled together under the table. 

In the sweltering heat of New Orleans, Dean tilts his beer back to his parched throat, bubbles and alcohol dancing along his tongue and cooling this throat. He’s not all the way to drunk, worries he might get maudlin if he does that tonight, but -- “Probably shouldn’t drive,” he says. 

“Already pulled out the blankets for the couch,” Charlie says.

 _Going to spend the night_ , he texts Benny. Sends him a picture of Charlie sitting on the balcony beside him, bottle to her lips, lit gold from the lights in the apartment behind them and a confusing dim mix of colors from the rain-shrouded streetlights in the fading evening before them. Sends him a picture from the sculpture garden, of the mosaic that’s a landscape in a landscape, Cas with his head cocked as he watches a passing bee rather than any of the actual art around them.

 _Been looking forward to a chance to watch Breathless without anyone bitching about subtitles_ , Benny says.

 _Easy enough way to get around that_ , Dean texts.

 _We don’t talk about the remake,_ Benny sends. _I don’t CARE if both Richard Gere and Valerie Kaprisky are wearing shirts cut all the way down to their bellybuttons, you just don’t do that to a seminal work of French new wave cinema. ___

___Snob_ , Dean sends._ _

___Philistine_ , Benny texts._ _

__Dean laughs, and puts his phone down on the balcony table. When he looks up, Charlie is smiling at him. Dean has a moment where he wants to control his face, but it’s just Charlie and he lets the goofy look remain in place._ _

__“You really liiiiiike him,” she singsongs, then squawks as Dean uses her distraction to snag a handful of her chips and cram them into his mouth._ _

__“Yes,” he says, grinning around his stolen handful of chips. And, raising a significant eyebrow: “Speaking of _like_...”_ _

__“Yes,” Charlie says, leaning in conspiratorially. “Although, really, _love_ is more accurate. I adore how these chips go with the beer and sandwiches. I did an excellent job of pairing.”_ _

__“Uh-huh,” Dean says, leaning in his chair and crossing his arms at her. “How’s Roseline?”_ _

__“She says things are pretty quiet lately,” Charlie says obtusely. “Nothing major going down we need to know about.”_ _

__Since Benny’s tattoo, they’ve settled into an easier-than-it-should-be alliance of sorts with Cecilia and her people. Sometimes Roseline comes bearing messages that need plausible deniability; hunters asking around about Benny or creatures asking around about Dean, bokor or caplata going a bit too dark side. It makes sense that Roseline would make contact with Charlie, since she’s the one who actually lives in the city. There isn’t too much of it, though, and there’s been less and less over time, because New Orleans and its inhabitants are nothing if not adaptable. It means that Roseline’s excuse to drop by and see Charlie has gradually gotten weaker and weaker as the months went on, and yet._ _

__Dean raises his beer and looks at Charlie as he drinks. “But how _is_ Roseline?” he asks._ _

__Charlie picks at the label on her bottle. “She’s good,” she says finally, and grins. “But we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you, and how much you like Benny.”_ _

__Dean’s phone buzzes on the table._ _

___Bring me back some catfish from the Saturday Market tomorrow?_ _ _

__“I don’t like him _that_ much,” Dean says. _Oh HELL no, I’m not stinking Baby up with seafood_ , he sends._ _

___All right then,_ Benny texts. _Instead…_ Sends a list of produce and ‘some cheese from that little lady with the goats’ fast enough that Dean’s pretty sure the whole capitulation on the fish thing was a bargaining ploy to get Dean to agree to go to the CBD at all._ _

___I’ll consider it,_ he texts. _ _

__Charlie peers sideways at his phone. “We going to the Market tomorrow?” she asks._ _

__“Apparently,” Dean says, already making up a list in his mind._ _

__“The guy with the fresh honeycomb should be there,” she says._ _

__“Hell yeah,” Dean says, but only a little._ _

____

*

In Dean and Benny’s house (in their _house_ , and that might never stop being weird) there is a room that is not, technically speaking, Charlie’s room. Yeah, there’s a change of clothes or two in there, some lady things, but she doesn’t live with them. It’s just where she stays when they’re on a research binge or they’ve been drinking, or she just doesn’t feel like driving all the way back into New Orleans that night. She likes to come out sometimes if there’s weather rolling in, and sit out on the veranda with Dean and watch the storm, and they breathe in the smell of rain and watch lightning split the sky wide open above the trees. Their back bedroom acquired a book here and a grimoire there, and at some point when Dean wasn’t looking too closely, it became a fairly impressive esoteric library. There’s a smaller, decent-ish sofabed crammed in there too. It works just fine for Krissy and Josephine because they’re both about three feet tall, but when Sam’s in town he always takes the regular couch in the living room over it.

Charlie’s apartment is a one-bedroom, but she has a fold-out. She has a surprisingly good fold-out. Better than a lot of motel beds Dean’s slept in. The frame is sturdy and Charlie got a memory foam mattress for it. If it’s both Dean and Benny it’s kinda tight, but it’s not like they tend to leave room for Jesus when they sleep.

Dean lies awake, staring at the dim city light playing through the blinds and across the ceiling, listening to the rain on the roof and Charlie’s occasional soft snores from her room. His phone is in his hand, and eventually he picks it up and calls Benny. It’s well past midnight but Benny doesn’t need much sleep. He’ll let it ring twice, he thinks. 

Benny picks up on the first ring. “Cheri,” he says. There’s low music playing in the background and Benny’s voice is quiet but not rough from sleep, so Dean figures he’s probably okay.

“Hey,” Dean says. There’s a long silence as he listens to the jazz filtering down the line. 

Dean half expects Benny to say _talk to me_ , but instead he fills the space by picking up a steady, easy story about his day and some experimentation he’s doing with fried okra and aubergines. Dean feels his chest slowly unwind.

Next time there’s a lull in the conversation, Benny lets it drag out, waiting for Dean put together what he’s trying to get out. Dean lies on his back and stares up at the deep shadows in the landscape of Charlie’s popcorn ceiling. “Do you --” Dean asks. Stops. “Never mind,” he says, feeling silly.

Benny’s voice is low and warm. “Think I will mind,” he says. “I’ll feel a lot better if you tell me what you’re thinking about.”

Dean closes his eyes for a second, because Benny is bad at asking for things for himself, and much better about asking Dean to do things for Benny that are clearly for Dean himself. “You should ask for things more often,” he says, because it suddenly feels more important than whatever - whatever angst he’s rolling in, or whatever. He thinks about the nicer clothes accumulating in Benny’s side of the closet and that’s good, it is, but he also - thinks about how Benny was going to let the family membership art gallery thing slide. He thinks about how patiently Benny waited for Dean to kiss him. And that was - that was perfect, okay, and Dean wouldn’t change it because it happened when they were both ready, both really ready, but -- “I want you to be happy,” Dean says. His hand tightens around his phone. “I want you to have --”

“Hey, there,” Benny breaks in. Voice low and soothing. “Mon coeur.”

“Right,” Dean says, flushing in the dark and feeling suddenly silly. Coughs. Like Benny’s not a whole-ass adult who can look after himself.

“I’ll try,” Benny says. “Swear.”

Dean swallows around whatever was building in his throat. “Okay,” he says.

“What if what I want is you to make me breakfast naked?” Benny asks, voice dropping even lower.

“Sure,” Dean says. “And then you can delicately and lovingly apply ointment to all my bacon grease burns.”

Benny laughs and Dean leans into the sound coming from his phone, just a little. “What I’d like, right now, is for you to tell me why you called.”

“Uggg,” Dean says. “Fine, turn the tables on me.” He takes a moment, listening to the rain on the Spanish tile. Breathing. “Do you ever --” he starts. Pauses. Takes a deep breath. “Do you ever wonder if this is all a dream?”

“I spent half a century in Purgatory,” Benny says. “Longer than that at sea with my nest.”

Dean thinks of what Benny’s said before. Thinks about long weeks with nothing but the open ocean, the lap of waves against the hull, creak and sway of the rigging. The ever-building anticipation-dread-desire of bloodlust. He thinks that sometimes, that was a kind of Purgatory too. He gets up off the fold-out, pads silently to the window.

“Maybe this is a dream,” Benny says. “Maybe this is the reward you get if you make to the other side of Purgatory. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe vampires aren’t real and these are my last neurons making me my own heaven as they wink out.”

“Dark,” Dean says, pulling the blinds back, just a bit, so he can watch the city lights filtered through the rain. “I don’t know, “ he says. “I don’t think my brain would let me imagine being this happy.” He’s not sure if he’d be able to say it if Benny were standing in front of him. It’s easier to say it to the empty street outside, the trees and their dancing branches, to the rain. Their lives aren’t perfect, they aren’t, and trauma lives on, but--

“I decide it’s real,” Benny says. “Every time I wonder. I decide it’s real. Because if it’s not, there’s nothing I can do about it. And if it is, I don’t want to waste a moment.”

Dean closes his eyes. Rests his forehead against the glass of the window. “Yeah,” he says. 

“Okay?” Benny asks.

Dean’s throat is thick and his eyes feel wet in a way that’s probably just humidity. “Yeah, okay,” he says. He presses his forehead to the glass and then pulls back, wiping his hand over his face. “Yeah, that sounds like a plan.”

“Mon coeur,” Benny says, and fuck this being easier at a distance, Dean wants to be able to dig his fingers into the meat of Benny’s shoulders and pull him in tight, wrap himself up in the heat and the scent of him. From the sound of him, the catch in his voice, Benny’d rather have his face buried in the crook of Dean’s neck so he can let the steady, comforting rhythm of Dean’s heart thrum through him. 

Dean sits back down heavily on the fold-out. Leans back until he’s staring up at the ceiling again. “Je t’aime,” Dean says. And: “Tell me more about that eggplant thing you’re working on.” Benny’s voice blurs with the rain tapping on the Spanish tiles until Dean falls asleep.

*

“Need a hand with anything?” Sam asks, hovering at the kitchen door.

Dean shrugs. “Knock yourself out,” he says, gesturing with his knife vaguely toward the pile of vegetables on the other cutting board. He’s not used to having this many people around, and even if most of the work went into getting the fire pit ready for the pig, there’s still a lot more to take care of than he expected. It feels like everyone he knows is currently in or around his home. The vegetables have been, quite honestly, his lowest priority. Hell if he’s planning on eating the rabbit food, but it feels like something they _should_ have, and he knows Sam and Josephine will get grouchy without.

(Dean will probably eat some of the vegetables, but only because it makes Benny feel better about Dean’s health.)

Dean goes back to working on dessert while Sam makes slow, precise cuts to the cucumbers. Dean rolls his eyes. “Doesn’t need to be a work of art, Vermeer,” he says. 

Sam snorts and starts chopping less precise pieces at a more reasonable speed.

Alex wanders into the kitchen. “Benny wants to know how long on dessert,” she says.

“Probably a half-hour. Ice cream’s in the freezer, and the fruit and donuts can sit for however long before we throw them on the grill,” Dean says.

“Cool,” Alex says, before snagging an entire red pepper and taking a bite out of it like an apple on her way out the door.

“What,” Sam says as she leaves.

Dean shrugs. If that’s the weirdest tick she’s developed after everything, good for her.

Sam transfers the cucumber onto the platter, starts working on the carrots. “So,” he says, innocently, and Dean feels his eyebrows go up. Sam clears his throat. “So,” he repeats. “There some special reason for this get-together? Some big announcement the two of you are planning to make?”

“Yes,” Dean says dryly. “You got me. I’m pregnant.”

Sam throws a carrot at Dean’s face. He catches it and eats it. Just to be ornery, not because he’s thinking about his long-term health or anything. 

“Dean,” Sam says again, looking significantly at Dean’s hand. 

Dean has a sudden moment of disconnection, a rush of _is this real_ , this quiet moment with his brother. His brother, who is apparently calmly and supportively expecting Dean to get engaged at any moment to A) a man; B) a much older man; C) a man who is much older on account of being a vampire.

 _This is real_ , Dean decides. _This is real._ Sam’s still looking pointedly at Dean’s hand.

“Nah,” Dean says. Shakes his head. “Not an engagement party or anything. Just thought it would be nice to have everyone in one place.” He looks out the window. He feels like the backyard should seem fuller with all the people there, but it feels just right. Out back, Benny looks up from his conversation with Alex and looks at Dean speculatively, and Dean has no idea how much he heard.

Benny’s protective of Alex in a way that she seems to appreciate. Benny was so careful around her at first, making sure he was in her line of sight in a room, that she always knew where he was. Alex’s history with vampires has apparently made her more comfortable with vampires rather than less, though, at least after an adjustment period.

Dean nods at Benny and Benny turns back to Alex.

Dean finished cutting the fruit for the grill. Grabs the head of cauliflower from beside Sam and starts working on it.

“It’s still weird,” Sam says, finally. “Not seeing you every day.”

Dean exhales. “Yeah,” he says. Except for that time Sam threw a hissy fit and sulked off to university, the week Sam threw a hissy fit and ran away to get a dog, that one week during the apocalypse they deliberately spent apart, and that time John left Dean in juvie for stealing food, they’ve been together pretty much every day they were both alive. 

Considering the shit Dean gave Sam every time Sam left, he’s been pretty good about Dean running away to Louisiana with a vampire.

“Benny’s been watching too much Food Network,” Dean says. They’ve spent more nights than Dean is going to admit, sprawled together on the couch watching Chopped or Anthony Bourdain or Iron Chef or Guy Fieri. It’s disgustingly domestic. He loves it. 

“I’m sure that much like PBS, there’s no such thing,” Sam says, because for someone so obsessed with health food he’s weirdly uninterested in cooking.

Dean laughs. “Benny somehow got it in his head to roast a whole-ass pig.” Dean got it in his head to spend an afternoon sprawled out in the sun, drinking a beer and watching Benny’s shoulders as he dug out a pit to roast said pig in. Dean shrugs. “I don’t know. Thought it would be cool if everyone got a chance to meet each other.” The door to the screened-in porch is open, and out that way he can just barely see that Krissy and Josephine have kidnapped Claire. They’ve retreated from the heat of the sun beneath one of the live oaks and appear to be comparing machetes. _Good_ , he thinks.

“It’s nice,” Sam says. “This is nice. I’m not --” he takes a deep breath. “I’m glad to be here,” he says, and continues to chop uneven chunks of carrots that hurt Dean’s soul, just a little. They work together, quietly, only noise the slice of knives through vegetables and the muffled voices of their friends. Cas’s low growl, Missouri’s brighter peal of laughter, Garth rambling excitedly about _something_.

Sam lets out a dramatic exhalation as he starts transferring carrots to the bowl. “How is it this hot all of the time?” he asks. “I don’t understand. How do you deal with it?”

“You get used to it,” Dean says glibly, like he doesn’t swear a blue streak every time he steps out from an air-conditioned building or mutter darkly into his pillow when it’s too hot to sleep.

Sam cracks stalks of celery back from the bunch, starts chopping. “Kevin and I were thinking of spending a couple of days in NOLA,” Sam says, changing the subject. “Any recommendations?”

Dean waves his knife at Sam. “First recommendation: never call it that again.”

Sam rolls his eyes. Dumps the celery onto the platter too, reaches for the remaining peppers. “Places to eat, things to do.”

“Eat at Susan’s,” Dean says. “Eat at Susan’s, when Benny’s in the kitchen. Tip well.”

“I was more thinking places in the city. Burgers, sushi, crawfish boil--”

Dean finishes slicing the skin from the pineapple. “Sushi, Sam?” he asks. “Really?” Puts his knife down so he can gesture with both hands. “I strike you as the kind of person who eats seaweed?”

Sam snorts and keeps cutting. “I’ve seen you eat a burger that was under your bed for two days. Also, Benny mentioned your favorite sushi place is somewhere in Gentilly but I couldn’t remember-”

Freaking Benny, besmirching Dean’s reputation like that. “I think I like it better when the two of you were trying to kill each other,” Dean says.

“Uh-huh,” Sam says, and starts in on the cauliflower.

“Good Time Sushi,” Dean mutters, finally. “Looks like the sketchiest-ass hole in the wall, and the decor includes horses and cows for some reason. Basic stuff. Good, though. They let you bring in your own beer.” Tamara and Jay had dragged Dean and Charlie there after a Big Easy Roller Girls game and Dean had full-on balked on the sidewalk outside until Tamara and Charlie started making chicken noises at him.

(After Dean and Josephine had been captured by vampires and drained almost dry; after the hospital; before Dean had known if Krissy and Josephine would be able to forgive him for Benny being a vampire; while Dean’s ribs were still broken enough he still had some of the good drugs; Dean had heard Sam and Benny talking. He was home, drifting in and out of sleep on the couch in the living room while Benny moved around in the kitchen. Benny’s steps lacked their normal, familiar cadence, just different enough that Dean couldn’t fall deeply asleep to them. Benny’s tread was just a little offbeat, like he was dodging around some kind of moose standing awkwardly by the kitchen table. 

_-think we’re copacetic, just because you’re not actively trying to cut off my head anymore?_ Benny was saying when Dean surfaced again.

 _... Yes?_ Sam asked, and Dean fought the painkillers to stay conscious enough to intervene if he had to.

 _This is how you and Dean work, isn’t it?_ Benny asks.

 _Dean and I work just fine,_ Sam says. _You and me, we going to have a problem?_

_Of course you and Dean are going to be fine. All I’m saying is that for most of your lives, all you had was each other, and maybe you don’t know how to stay mad at each other, even when you should._

_I have just as many reasons to be mad at Dean as he does at me._

_Of course you do_ , Benny said. _But I’ve got a horse in this race. I ain’t going to stay mad forever, but just - just give me until his ribs heal before you ask me to make nice._

There was a long pause. Dean, fighting to stay conscious, didn’t hear anything that sounded like a weapon being drawn, and took that as a good sign.

Sam sighed, eventually. _Okay_ , he said. _Okay, that sounds fair._

Footsteps moved from the kitchen into the living room, and Dean felt the presence of someone settling on the coffee table and did his very best impression of someone unconscious. Prickle of a beard as Benny leaned forward to kiss his jaw. _Go to sleep_ , he whispered, and Dean did.)

*

Dean flips the corn on the grill what he judges is probably the last time, husks charred almost right. He closes the barbeque and a broad hand settles at his waist.

“Smells good,” Benny says, nuzzling behind Dean’s ear.

“I’m sweaty and gross,” Dean says, wiping a forearm across his forehead but not pushing Benny away.

Benny hums against his neck, nuzzling in. His beard scratches gently against Dean’s skin, brim of his hat pressing along Dean’s ear. He murmurs something against Dean’s neck in French that Dean doesn’t have to catch to _know_ is either sappy sweet or unabashedly filthy. Or both.

Krissy leans conspiratorially across the picnic table towards Claire. “They’re like this all the time,” Krissy says. 

“Hey,” Dean scowls, because whether or not that’s a lie, she’s talking like Josephine isn’t literally sitting in her lap. He still doesn’t push Benny away.

“Local man tolerably fond of his boyfriend, news at 10,” Josephine says, rolling her eyes at Dean.

“Look who we have here!” Donna yells, and Dean looks over to see Charlie coming around the corner of the house. She has a bag of chips tucked under one arm, and Roseline’s hand caught in the other.

“Finally,” Dean mutters. Benny laughs, the vibration rumbling through his chest where it’s pressed against Dean’s back.

“About time you showed up here,” Benny yells. No one looks particularly _surprised_ , but Missouri, hovering by the fire pit, has a particularly fond smile.

Dean grins at Charlie, and she nods at him. Behind her, Roseline flashes Dean and Benny the most open smile he’s ever seen from her. “I hope your potluck contribution is a new bug-proofing spell,” Dean hollers. “This one’s running a little thin.” 

“Go say hi,” Dean tells Benny, gesturing with the tongs. Benny disentangles, and while everyone is looking at Charlie and Roseline, Dean sneaks a quick, dry kiss. Benny pats his ass, and heads over. Dean looks over the lid of the barbeque as he opens it to check the corn, and catches Missouri looking right at him. She’s not judgmental or anything, but she mutters what Dean is pretty sure is _this timeline, I swear._

*

“Hey,” Jody says, settling in easily beside Dean.

Dean’s sitting on the steps to the veranda, leaning back against the next riser. He’s riding the knife’s edge of perfectly full, when he’s had enough more than he _needs_ that he’s not worrying about when the next meal will come, but not so much that he feels sick. He feels warm, and only some of it is from the heat of the day.

Jody knocks her knee against his. “Thanks for putting this together.”

“Seems to be going well,” Dean says. He nods at where Claire is standing with Garth and Cas, arms crossed suspiciously but her head turned so she can hear what Garth’s saying. “Looks like she’s making friends.”

Sam had asked if there was any reason for this shindig and Dean told him there wasn’t one in particular, but the truth is this: Jody’s pretty sure that Claire’s going to take off on her own soon. Dean spent his youth on the road trying his hardest to pretend he didn’t know how much he wanted to stand still, but he gets it. She’s a teenager who’s been through some shit, had her feet and home knocked out from beneath her a million times. Claire’s feet and fists are itchy, and she feels like Jody is stifling her, and nothing Jody does is going to convince her otherwise, especially considering pretty much every other parent or authority figure she’s had got overwritten into an entirely different being. 

So maybe half the point of this BBQ was to make sure Claire knew Krissy and Josephine and Dean’s generally decentralized band of weirdos and freaks and their loose base down here. That she met Garth, who’s mostly out of the game except for when he’s not or when someone needs a werewolf or plate at his table. She already knows Sam and Kevin, but these days they’re doing a lot of research and coordination of hunters, except for when they’re doing explosively loud and spectacularly dangerous things. 

Maybe it won’t do anything. Maybe at least it’ll help Claire feel like she has a bunch of places to run between, rather than one to run from.

Dean looks out over his friends and family and he has that gnawing fear that maybe this is all a dream. He closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath, and decides that this is real and true, and that he wouldn’t dream up this kind of humidity. He opens his eyes again and watches Benny and Sam bicker about barbeque. Which is kind of hilarious, because Sam can’t even _cook_.

“Where’d you get a whole pig, anyway?” Sam asks, and Benny just tilts his head sideways at him with raised eyebrows and heroically doesn’t flash his teeth. Alex breaks into laughter. “Right,” Sam says, swallowing and obviously remembering the wild hog he’d come _this close_ to totaling his silly plastic car on last year. Behind them, Kevin has joined Missouri’s granddaughter Patience in what a responsible adult would probably get up and go make sure is rootbeer pong rather than beer pong.

Dean leans back on the stairs, elbows on the worn riser behind him, as he surveys these people, his family. “What do you think Bobby would have made of all of this?” he asks, quietly. 

“He’d have been real happy,” Jody says. “Except about this godforsaken heat,” she says, fanning a little at where sweat is collecting at the dip of her collarbone. Her mouth twists wryly and Dean thinks she can also viscerally hear Bobby saying _hot as BALLS_.

Dean shrugs. “Even…” he asks, looking at Benny, trailing off.

Jody bumps her shoulder against Dean’s. “He’d have come around.” She dusts her hands off on her pants and stands. Offers Dean her hand up. “At the end of the day, what he wanted was for you and Sam to be happy.”

“I am,” Dean says. It feels a little like he’s tempting fate, or admitting a deep dark secret. “Happy, I mean.”

“Never would have guessed,” Jody says, and hugs him tight when he lets her pull him to his feet.

“Yeah,” Dean says, and hugs her back. “Thanks.” He lets go. Knocks their elbows together as they head back towards their family.

*

Dean stares up at the ceiling in the fading light, listens to the rickety whir of the fan and the way the house settles in the near-silence. Krissy and Josephine took off this morning, folding up the sofabed in the library, heading out after a night hag in San Antonio. They were the last to head out, so after a couple of days, they’ve finally disgorged all of their houseguests. Except for Charlie, who, much like Sam, doesn’t count. Dean loves his friends, okay, and he loves his brother, but he’s kind of excited to not have to worry about tripping over an air mattress if he gets up in the middle of the night, or someone walking in on him and Benny in the shower.

Honestly, he doesn’t give much of a damn about the shower thing, because it’s their damn house and people who barge into closed bathrooms get what they deserve, SAM. The air mattress collision thing, though, he was actually a lot more concerned about. There were way too many hunters and firearms in this house for loud noises, thuds, and high-pitched screams in the middle of the night to end well.

Benny slides into bed beside him. Dean half-turns toward him in the deep shadows, sinking further into the pillows. Benny’s hair is still loose and damp from the shower. 

“Hey,” Dean says, and reaches out to cup Benny’s face. Ghosts his thumb from the corner of Benny’s eye, the arrested crinkles there, to the curve of his brow. Pushes his fingers back into Benny’s hair, short strands sliding damply against the pads of his fingers, beneath his cupped palm. 

“Hey,” Benny says and turns his face into Dean’s hand, kisses the inside of his forearm. Dean’s fingers flex at the back of Benny’s skull reflexively as he pulls him in closer. 

“Hey,” Dean says, dopey. Shifts so their faces are even closer together on their pillows. Tilts his forward to press their foreheads together. “I love you,” he says. 

Benny’s arm comes up. He cups Dean’s elbow, runs the back of his loosely curled knuckles up his tricep. “Mon coeur,” he says. Broad palm cupping Dean’s shoulder blade, fingers running a soothing rhythm along Dean’s spine. “Je t’aime,” he says. Their foreheads still press together. 

Dean feels like he should be rolling his hips into Benny’s or something. Honestly, though, it’s late and he’s tired and he’s too damn hot to think about sex, and he’s not going to pretend that the phrase _are you going to get over here and cuddle me, or what?_ has never left his lips. 

“Laisse-moi te tenir,” Benny says, and if what Benny wants is to hold him, Dean’s not going to put up a fight.

“If you insist,” Dean says, low, lets his leg hook itself around Benny of its own volition, and they shift easily into each other, bodies knowing all the ways they fit.

*

When Dean wakes, the heat has finally broken. Cool air brushes down along the curve of his bare back and nudges up against the sheet pooled around his hips. He blinks slowly into the deep shadows and golden highlights of the early morning sun. He’s alone in bed and the sheets beside him are cool to the touch, which doesn’t really mean anything, given that Benny runs at room temperature. Benny also only needs a few hours of sleep a night, so waking up alone isn’t out of the ordinary. Benny is also the biggest cuddle slut Dean’s ever been with, and sometimes he gets up for a few hours in the night before he crawls back into bed with Dean to wake up beside him. (If Dean’s being honest with himself - which he’s trying to get better at, he is - he’s a bit of a cuddle slut himself.)

The sun’s starting to come up, Dean estimates by the depth of shadows. The window is open behind the curtains, and the breeze is strong enough that their edges flutter. It’s been stifling hot for what feels like Dean’s entire life, humidity a physical and oppressive weight, and this is the first time in weeks it’s broken. Dean burrows his head further into his pillow and his crossed arms beneath it, watches the curtains flutter hypnotically through half-lidded eyes. After what could be a minute or ten, he yawns and feels his jaw crack, rolls out of bed and lazily stretches his arms overhead. He scoops up a shirt from the floor beside the bed and pads quietly through the house in his boxers, pulling the shirt over his head as he moves down the half-lit hall. The stretched-out neck of it settles softly against his clavicle, and he realizes it’s one of Benny’s. Charlie’s door stands ajar, bed unmade and sheets half on the floor. Everywhere, Benny has gone through the house and opened all of the windows as far as they go, pulled back the drapes in the other rooms to let the maximum amount of cool air flow through. 

The smell of coffee on the cool air draws him into the kitchen. He fills a ludicrous artisanal mug Sam got him from some dumb farmer’s market with the cheap-ass coffee Benny always makes, because Benny still hasn’t learned to appreciate the good stuff. Dean puts the rest of the pot back on the warmer and pads out onto the screened-in veranda. Charlie and Benny are out there already, mugs steaming and watching the sunrise. Benny’s leaning cross-armed against the railing, and Charlie’s sitting in the middle of the long bench. Benny turns his head and smiles as Dean lets the door shut quietly behind him. 

Charlie pats the bench beside her and Dean settles beside her, props his bare feet up on the low table and wiggles his toes against the cool metal. Charlie rolls her eyes and pulls his legs across her lap so that his feet rest on the empty cushion so she can use his knees as a coffee table. Dean settles back against the arm of the couch and wriggles his toes into the cushion. The fabric is patterned in gingham and sunflowers. Sam bought them as a present to be a shithead and Dean put them out because the look on Sam’s face when he saw them in use was perfection. (They’re still there, because a) free, and b) surprisingly comfy.)

The mug of coffee Charlie is resting against his knees is pale with creamer and sugar, adulterated far more than any other coffee she tends to drink, and she and Dean exchange knowing looks over the top of their mugs as they raise them to drink.

Benny straightens from where he’s leaning against the railing and turns towards them. Dean lifts his feet to let Benny settle underneath, lets his heels come to rest in his lap as Benny settles beside them. He shifts a little, pulling out his phone, and Dean and Charlie nod in silent assent. They shift a bit into frame as Benny switches his phone camera around, and let him capture a photo of the three of them, sleepy and smiling and burnished gold in the light of the rising sun.

Phone away, Benny holds his mug in one hand and rests his other against the arch of Dean’s foot, and Dean settles back more firmly against the armrest, careful not to dislodge Charlie’s cup perched once again against his knees, and they drink terrible coffee and watch the sunrise. Gold starts to give way to peach and rose gold, scattered clouds flaring orange against the brightening sky. Birds are starting to wake, their calls blending with insect song and the rustle of grass and leaves in the cool breeze.

With the heat broken, Dean’s lungs feel open and light in a way he’d almost forgotten. He knows the heat will burn through again, but for now he breathes into the space, flexes his toes against Benny’s thighs and feels Charlie’s mug resting against his knees, and he watches the sunrise and he smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Full disclosure: where the art in Wayfinding was all drawn from museum catalogues and virtual walkthroughs, and the traveling exhibits I've used here were at the New Orleans Museum of Art in this timeframe, [Morning at Grand Manan by Alfred Thompson Bricher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_at_Grand_Manan#/media/File:Morning_at_Grand_Manan_by_Alfred_Thompson_Bricher.jpg) is actually part of the collections of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. 
> 
> In this universe, a vampire donated it to the New Orleans Museum of Art instead.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading.


End file.
